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Where things stand with the Department of War

anthropic.com

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Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#191

Post by squibonpig »

cat_plus_plus wrote: post #66
brookst wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a mistake to conflate “wants to spend money on the most ethical option available” with “ think the most ethical option available is perfect” Why wouldn’t you move your dollars to someplace incrementally better?

There are so many inference providers not working for Department of War. Even Alibaba and sure China has lots of issues but they are not bombing anyone now if that's your first priority. Or else, smaller US / European / Asian companies with pure civilian focus. SOTA open weights models they serve are perfectly suitable for coding and chat. I run a local Qwen3.5-122B-A10B-NVFP4 instance and it writes entire Android ap…

I'm not sure there's really any good large model providers

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#192

Post by lp4v4n »

jmyeet wrote: post #72
hglaser wrote: post #18

It is incredible how far the overton window has moved on this issue. When I graduated in 2007, it was common for tech companies to refuse to let their systems be used for war, and it was an ordinary thing when some of my graduating classmates refused to work at companies that did let their systems be used for war. Those refusals were on moral grounds. Now Anthropic wants to have two narrow exceptions, on pragmatic an…

When people (myself included FWIW) warn about the dangers of American imperialism, it's because: 1. As President Eisenhower said in his farewell address in 1961 [1], every dollar spent on the military-industrial complex is a dollar not spent on schools or houses or hospitals or bridges; 2. Every American company with sufficient size eventually becomes a defense contractor. That's really what's happened with the tech…

>1. As President Eisenhower said in his farewell address in 1961 [1], every dollar spent on the military-industrial complex is a dollar not spent on schools or houses or hospitals or bridges;

This humanist view unfortunately doesn’t hold anymore in the modern world. Boomers will be happy as long as not a single dollar is spent on housing, so that their own homes can appreciate in value. Republicans would rather burn money than spend it on houses, hospitals, or bridges that might benefit immigrants or “other people” more than themselves.

I used an American political party only as a reference, but the same phenomenon can be seen in many countries around the world. Society has become incredibly cynical and has regressed a lot in terms of humanity.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#193

Post by moron4hire »

SoftTalker wrote: post #171
moron4hire wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? I'm not questioning whether the weapons research actually happened. I'm questioning the sincerity of people claiming they didn't know what they were doing. I've seen plenty of weapons programs. They aren't a secret to the people working on them . My point is, the government doesn't need to lie to researchers or even pay them very well to get them to develop weapons because there are plenty of intelligent-enough…

Lots of people working on the Manhattan project did not know what they were working on. The core group of physicists did, but not many others.

I think you could get away with that excuse in 1945 when this whole system was first being created from scratch. It's been 80 years since then.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#194

Post by bfung »

hglaser wrote: post #18

It is incredible how far the overton window has moved on this issue. When I graduated in 2007, it was common for tech companies to refuse to let their systems be used for war, and it was an ordinary thing when some of my graduating classmates refused to work at companies that did let their systems be used for war. Those refusals were on moral grounds. Now Anthropic wants to have two narrow exceptions, on pragmatic an…

I’d argue it’s come full circle and it hasn’t changed a bit.

There wouldn’t be a Silicon Valley without World War 2 and US gov. funding of Stanford to develop radar basically.

The initial investment from then gave critical capital mass for Stanford, the VCs, and the tech companies of today.

https://youtu.be/ZTC_RxWN_xo?si=gGza5eIv485xEKLS

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#195

Post by FpUser »

AnbdgK wrote: post #133
unethical_ban wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this the moral hazard of war as it becomes more of a distance sport? That powerful governments can order the razing of cities and assassinate leaders with ease? We need to do it because our enemies are doing it, in any case.

I do not think that anyone but the US and Israel have assassinated leaders in the last 30 years. I also question their autonomous drone advancement. Russia and China did not have the means to help Venezuela and they do not have the means to help Iran.

>"Russia and China did not have the means to help Venezuela"

Of course they have the means. Nothing technical prohibits them from blowing couple of carriers. But the price they would have to pay is way too high.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#196

Post by krapp »

jwkpiano1 wrote: post #148
krapp wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The correct name is the Department of War. Calling it the Department of Defense implies a system of laws, checks and balances which no longer exists.

It very much still exists, and statements like this are what’s called “obeying in advance.” Don’t do it.

I'm sorry but it does not very much still exist. Otherwise, Congress would be doing something other than praying for the Anointed One and his holy war.

I'm not obeying in advance, but I'm not giving lip service to normality, either.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#197

Post by maxlybbert »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #114
randerson wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hypothetically if we had a choice between sending in humans to war or sending in fully autonomous drones that make decisions on par with humans, the moral choice might well be the drones - because it doesn't put our service members at risk. Obviously anyone who has used LLMs know they are not on par with humans. There also needs to be an accountability framework for when software makes the wrong decision. Who gets fi…

What do you mean, "hallucinates and kills people"? Killing people is the thing the military is using them for; it's not some accidental side effect. It's the "moral choice" the same way a cruise missile is — some person half a world away can lean back in their chair, take a sip of coffee, click a few buttons and end human lives, without ever fully appreciating or caring about what they've done.

I'm sure it was meant as "kills the wrong people."

People are always worried about getting rid of humans in decision-making. Not that humans are perfect, but because we worry that buggy software will be worse.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#198

Post by krapp »

jghn wrote: post #177
krapp wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The correct name is the Department of War. Calling it the Department of Defense implies a system of laws, checks and balances which no longer exists.

It is the DoD u tip congress says otherwise

Congress hasn't said otherwise, so...

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#199

Post by nickff »

agigao wrote: post #140

Around 10 years ago, in college, in Calculus class I had a very ambitious classmate, wanted to go to DARPA and work on Robotics. I asked if he was thinking it through solely from technical perspective or considering ethics side as well. Clearly, he didn't understand the question and I directly inquired - what if the code you write or autonomous machine you contribute to used for killing? His response - that's not my…

>” I inquired why founders, CEOs or developers weren't in part of the discussion or in attendance? Moderator responded that they couldn't find them qualified enough to take part in the discussion.”

This seems more like credentialist arrogance than a well-reasoned judgment.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#200

Post by [deleted] »

reaperducer wrote: post #159
moron4hire wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? I'm not questioning whether the weapons research actually happened. I'm questioning the sincerity of people claiming they didn't know what they were doing. I've seen plenty of weapons programs. They aren't a secret to the people working on them . My point is, the government doesn't need to lie to researchers or even pay them very well to get them to develop weapons because there are plenty of intelligent-enough…

If "This doesn't fit into my mental model, so everyone else must be lying" is how you deal with things you didn't personally experience, do what you have to.

[deleted]
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